ong Zhe was addressing a public speech to students of China University of Technology, on a national tour of promotion.

The name of One-man University originates from the pronunciation of its Chinese name Wanmen, which means ‘ten thousand doors’, implies the wide range of subjects it provides.

In fact, just as the name indicates, Tong was the only teacher at the time the university established in 2012.

“It’s incredible that Tong could use vivid examples and metaphors to help explain abstruse matters,” said Chen Yizhou, CEO of Renren who became a shareholder of One-man University in April this year, with his eyes wide open, “those foreign online courses with Chinese subtitles may seem hard to understand and digest thus bore the students, while Tong’s courses, such as his theoretical physics course, are truly absorbing.”

From Home-made Online Physics Course to One-man University

Now the university has an online enrollment of over 140,000 students, including undergraduate students, graduate students and even high school ones, on its official website and Renren, a popular social network in China. Students could choose a variety of courses ranges from theoretical physics, history, finance, economics, foreign languages studies to those of secondary school education.

“Tong is a guy of surprising perseverance,” said Lu Tiankun, Tong’s former classmate in high school. Lu said they once discussed their future dreams in dormitory. “Tong said his dream for future is to positively impact the world around him by building organizations that are both fun to work for and that delight and enlighten people each day.”

In the school dormitory in Paris, Tong Zhe shot his first video of physics named “Zhe’s theoretical physics lesson-- entropy and phase transition.” The two-hour video was divided into six episodes and uploaded to Youku, a major video website in China, and each was viewed over 60,000 times a week after posted.

“I am an art student but now find theoretical physics so interesting! Isn’t it amazing? I could understand like, 70 per cent of Tong’s lesson, with the help of his examples and his way of explaining, ” @MelodyJane (a Youku user) posted on Youku comment board. She said she has only heard once about entropy and phase transition before, and that was in the TV series Big Bang Theory.”

“His first video became a hit.” Lu said. Then Tong decided to go on with his idea of “let people enlighten themselves with interesting free online courses”.  As a bachelor in Peking University and master in Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris (Paris Superior Normal University) in Theoretical Physics, Tong gave up his early admission with full scholarship to Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and went back to China to establish the One-man University.

‘One-man’ Verses Universities

“I hope that the education resources could be freely accessible to more people.”

Tong said One-man is pushing forward the education revolution by its free online course.

“Some of the college professors are just reading PPT slides in the class, in this case students can hardly discover what they are really interested in.” said Peng Zhong, a Chinese Literature student in Fudan University, “I like Tong’s idea, it provides us with something refreshing. Teachers illustrate abstruse concepts in a vivid way.”

Over 300 hundred students attended Tong’s lecture in Huazhong University of Science. The lecture also caught teachers’ attention. Liuyu, the Dean of Qiming School at Huazhong University of Science exclaimed, slightly nodding his head, “I’ve never seen so many students fascinated to the lecture. Not even when the Big Names in academic research come to our university.”

Tong demonstrated how his Maths class is like during the lecture. Professor Liu commented that Tong is able to use plain language and interesting examples to help students better understand the principles and theories of Maths. “I felt a sense of crisis,” Liu smiled in a sense of humour, then said.

Tong once delivered speech in South University of Technology too, and was highly praised by Zhu Qingshi, a professor of Chinese Acedemy of Science. In Zhu’s view, the way One-man University spreads knowledge and cutting-edge education idea is worth praising for. He mentioned One-man University in the same breath with South University of Technology, saying that the two are both brave pioneers and idealists who dare to take actions to improve China’s high education system.

The future of One-man University

Tong Zhe has an influence of 130,000 followers on Renren. Many girls leave comments on his homepage showing their support, as well as their appreciation to Tong’s profile photo. In that photo, Tong is smiling gently in a black, close-fitting shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows.

With the increase of its followers, critical remarks arrive. Some netizens on Weibo applause for Tong’s innovations, some suspect One-man’s non-profit mode, some do not think the university would last long; some even clash him with verbal attacks.

Tong tackled these attacks with “smilence”, that is, according to him-“smile and keep silent.” He said, “I do not have time to react to rumors. My top priority is to enhance the course system, the online platform and to hire more lecturers.”

As the cooperation with Renren established, One-man University now focus more on the content they present to the students.

“Granted, students have an entrenched psychological distance to the translated version of foreign online courses. However, courses from One-man University are well-behaved in localization and full of vigor. They meet the expectations of ideal online courses to young people--interesting and inspiring. The glory even covers up the flaws,” said Qi Daquan, a retired chemistry professor of Peking University, “frankly speaking, Tong and his team may need to release more advanced courses videos for some subjects.”

Recently, Tong Zhe finished a 600 hours’ online course shooting project in 43 days. The courses vary from Advanced Mathematics, Mathematical Physics, Theoretical Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics. He also hired several professors to teach students Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian and so on.

Shen jiyu, Tong’s former classmate in the University, now works on his team. He said Tong works 16 hours per day with his team. “He sometimes sleeps on the sofa in our studio,” Shen said. He added that the two of them bear in mind a motto saying that, ”Wenn man aufgehört hat, für seine Träume zu kämpfen, hat man aufgehört zu leben.” (If you have ceased to fight for his dreams, you have ceased to live.)

Tong and his team never cease to fight for their dreams, believing that education resources should not be considered expensive thus far-fetched. “Please remember to be enlightened on your own.” Tong said, “ you are your university.”